Cachinnation
by ImOrca
Summary: Carol has a moment of stark revelation, and comes to recognize that being alive means appreciating every awful detail of the world as it is. Set during the time jump between S2-S3. Rated for dark-ish themes.


**Notes: From the American Heritage Medical Dictionary: "Cachinnation: Loud, hard, or compulsive laughter without apparent cause." Carol seems to be able to appreciate things that other characters can't. A lot of stories presume that this is because of some innate "goodness" in her sweet soul, often just because she's a woman. Maybe that is the case. But the world of TWD is awful. And the Carol of "Beside the Dying Fire" (2.13) didn't seem to me to be able to do that. She seemed desperate, unable to cope, and certainly not resolved to survive. And for the character to have become something so different than her comic book incarnation, I think she'd have had to have some rather stark realizations. I tried to envision what one of them might be.**

**Disclaimer: Copyright for **_**The Walking Dead**_** belongs to AMC, et al. My writing belongs to me, as do errors.**

**Title: "Cachinnation"**

She supposed that nobody felt exactly right calling this a "new" world. But calling it an "apocalypse" or a "holocaust" or simply "hell" surely didn't make it an easier place to live. It didn't explain anything. None of those labels answered any question about why things were as they were. All those words did was continue to leave the horror inside the dark recesses of a nightmare that nobody could quite remember, and it was the uncertainty itself that held the horror. She'd had enough sleepless nights to think on it, and she felt pretty certain of that.

There were things she knew. She knew when she was awake. She knew the difference between the awfulness of reality and the sheer terror of a dream. She knew the difference between the ugliness of sanity, and those moments when she had stepped near to the veil and other side. And because she had stepped so close, had brushed her fingertips and eyelashes along its silken edge, she knew what there was to really fear.

Death wasn't to be feared. It would probably be a relief. She knew that she dared not tell anyone, but she no longer felt sorrow that Sophia was not facing the world. She felt deep remorse for her final... days? hours? minutes? of living, and that her time on earth had not been protected from the knowledge of what her father was, but Carol did not regret that Sophia's life had ended.

Pain wasn't to be feared. It was a reassuring companion of the living, as were hunger, exhaustion, rage, boredom, filth, cold, and grinding, endless work.

Walkers were not to be feared. She knew what a walker was and how to kill it. They had seen the computer show them exactly how one became. It wasn't exactly a mystery – like meningitis, Jenner had said. When it came down to it, she knew as much about how the zombie contagion worked as she knew about HIV when it didn't yet have a name. She once helped a patron at the library where she volunteered look up the history of that plague and had been shocked to discover that the earliest medical information about the disease wasn't from the 1980s like she had thought, but dated back to the late 1950s. She wondered if Vi the computer would have revealed to them that the CDC had made the bug and hatched it on the unsuspecting population if someone had thought to ask her. Wouldn't that have been something out of a Stephen King novel? If Jenner and his cronies were the ones who made it and then couldn't stop it before it killed them and then raised them again? Unfortunately, death wasn't exactly something you could decide to abstain from like sex.

Carol found the mundanely wretched moments of survival reassuring now. She had learned to navigate them as the new borders of meaning in her existence. Everyone needed to be able to predict a sense of the future. While pain, death, betrayal, hunger, and loss were not pleasant, they could be trusted to repeat. And if they were going to repeat, they weren't exactly frightening anymore. Carol had discovered where fear lay in these changed circumstances. It had dawned on her the day she realized that Mark Twain had finally been proven wrong.

Turned out it wasn't actually Mark Twain.

It was just a week after the farm fell and they were still living a vagabond existence. She'd been desperate at that time for somebody to make things..._differen_t. Sophia was dead, Dale newly gone, and Andrea, Patricia, and Beth's boyfriend taken as the barn burned. And Rick revealed that he had killed Shane, in self-defense if he was to be believed. They'd lost most of what had made their existence pass for normal when they had run and scattered. They had no supplies, no tools. The few reminders of who they had been were in the R.V. and their makeshift tent city, never to be retrieved. They had already begun what they would later find to be the pattern of their existence – running in circles from the endlessly coalescing herds of walkers. She didn't trust Rick, and nobody trusted her. She hadn't even understood why they had her standing watch. She sure as heck hadn't known how to shoot the gun she was toting. She'd felt useless.

They'd stopped to syphon gas and scavenge supplies. She'd been on watch with T-Dog because the weather necessitated double duty. The humidity was so high that fog had settled even though it was midday. The fog made everything fade away into indistinctness. The visibility was terrible, of course. But strangely the water vapor in the air had interfered with the way sound traveled, so they couldn't be sure of what they were hearing. It made the atmosphere heavy, so that their skin couldn't tell hot from cold, damp from dry. And everything had smelled like wet wool, heavy, dull and cloying. The air didn't move.

With her senses muffled she'd had to do something to keep herself awake and alert. She'd been thinking about the viral mystery and transmission, and how if they were all infected that now not only death was inevitable but so was...what? Reanimation?

Suddenly it struck her that the other inevitable thing that they had all always known...wasn't inevitable at all: taxes. Was it Mark Twain who had said that? Or maybe it wasn't Mark Twain.

First it struck her as odd. Then it struck her as absurd. And then it struck her as the funniest cosmic joke ever. She had started to giggle to herself.

It had never occurred to her before to think about the people of this life as their tax-paying counterparts. And why would she? Taxes were part of civilization – just another one of those things that simply didn't matter. And that was...funny.

As she laughed she thought of Jenner. He would always represent the crumbling of civilization to her, living out his last pathetic days in the last stronghold of technology that was useless to him – to all of them. She knew she would always see Jenner in her mind's eye as he was that final morning: in his pressed pants and tie, his crisp lab coat with his name embroidered over the pocket nearly glowing it was so white.

And suddenly she had envisioned him with a huge calculator in his hand, arguing with his H & R Block representative over whether he could write off the clip-art lingerie he'd purchased for his computer mistress, Vi, as a "business expense." She began to laugh out loud. Jenner! Alone in his lab, flirting with his computer to pass the time! In a way it was almost more believable than the idea that the scientist had been married.

She'd snorted in a very unladylike fashion as she realized that this was one thing Ed would have laughed with her about. Those things had been rare enough.

She'd envisioned Ed driving the Cherokee out across some abandoned section of highway, accelerator to the floor, all widows down, an open beer in one hand, screaming his fool head off about finally living as a "free citizen under the constitution" like he and his militia buddies were always cussing about down in the basement after they'd gotten drunk and courageous. "No goddam in-cum takk-says, no cort sistems, juss US! Whoo!" he'd yell as he sprayed half-chewed corn nuts against the windshield.

She was laughing so hard her belly and face had begun to hurt. It was strange, but it was...a relief to think about Ed and not sense a phantom pain on her cheek, or half-remember the weight of the pick in her hands and feel the ghostly stickiness of gore splashing back from the strikes as she ensured he would never rise again. It felt good to picture him as the fat fool he had always been, and not as the dark figure she had once cowered from.

Then she had pictured Rick in his sheriff's uniform and that broad-brimmed hat, pulling Ed over, making him walk the line and touch his fingers to his nose, blow a breath test, and writing him a ticket for open container, DUI, drunk and disorderly, resisting arrest, and of course...tax evasion!

At that point she had to put her weapon down. She was light headed from lack of oxygen and could no longer stand, but she couldn't stop. She'd pictured Shane, as Rick's partner, strutting out from the sheriff's vehicle.

Her head was between her knees by then and she was holding her stomach, because as she imagined him Shane wasn't dressed as a deputy. Oh, no. He was wearing a rooster suit, or more precisely, he was strutting because Carol imagined he was dressed _like a cock_! And then she, herself, crowed.

She remembered thinking she was doing something dangerous. Not only was she not watching, she was actively a danger to the group because of the noise.

Because... if there was a _wild game cock_ about, then by god, the mighty hunter Daryl Dixon _would shoot it_! She nearly choked as the scene flashed in her head: Rooster Shane flapped up and over the Cherokee, shitting in fright on the sauced Ed, as Daryl let loose his first shaft. The arrow hit the giant chicken in the dark meat (Carol couldn't breathe as she'd thought it) and he let out a mighty "Cluck!" This rousted Rick from his ticket-writing to defend his partner.

Carol had tried to struggle to her feet. She had a fleeting notion that she should try to get to a vehicle to at least muffle the sound. But try as she might, there was nothing she could do to stop. She had fallen back on her ass again, gasping for breath, losing her grip on the rifle. She'd laid back fully, hoping to ease her lungs and quaking abdominals, as tears had begun leaking from her eyes.

And with no warning there it was, rising in front of her like the grasping, voracious hunger that drove the walkers, but without their recognizable shape – without their smothering stench, festering wounds, the wordless groans that spoke from their nothingness.

Because it gave no warnings, no visible or audible signs, it had no beginning and no end, and it was so far away from funny that she had no response to it but...to laugh. And it occurred to her that she hadn't laughed in so long before this that _maybe it was ok_ to laugh and laugh and laugh.

But with her next exclamation she felt it pull at her, and something seemed funny, but maybe not _funny_ funny.

She'd tried, then, to struggle against it, but Daryl's poncho had flapped behind him as he chased the clucking Shane, and she _had_ to laugh.

And Rick had thrown his ticket book at the redneck, letting loose an explosion of paper that began to rain down over the Cherokee, sticking to the shit on Ed's fat head. And she couldn't _not_ laugh.

And Ed had chased Rick who was chasing Daryl who was chasing Shane who was clamoring over the police cruiser as a ticker-tape blizzard raged and Jenner's voice told them all that their taxes were coming due! Their taxes were coming due! They'd have to pay! And it was not funny!

So very not funny that she couldn't breathe for _how hard_ she was laughing, and how hard she was crying meant that she couldn't see anything but the grasping, hungry nothingness.

And then she had smelled gasoline, harsh and pungent, curling her nose hair and turning her stomach. And it hadn't been very funny.

She had felt a yank on her shoulder so hard that it pulled her from the ground. It wasn't funny. The pain was intense, close to the time Ed had dislocated it and she'd had to walk to the emergency room because he'd driven off drunk in the Cherokee.

Her ear drum contracted. She didn't exactly hear the word, but she felt the reverberation. She knew what it was to be yelled at. She turned her head away. But she knew from experience that this might lead to more yelling. So she turned toward.

And she knew it wasn't funny, and that, in fact, her laughter had been the cause of the yelling. The second time she had heard his voice clearly as Daryl said, less forcefully, "Carol! Christ, what's wrong with you?"

She had seen him then. He was unwashed, as they all were, with a line of grime smeared along his hairline beneath his greasy bangs. His neck looked gritty where it met the collar of his dingy, worn shirt. His jawline has been sparsely covered, as always, with a poorly filled beard, and it looked like a smattering of acne was trying to break out among the whiskers. That day it had caught some bits of something that clung below his chin. He hadn't wiped the sleep from his eyes that morning, and it remained crusted at the corners. He looked as terrible as they all did. And as she stood there with her shoulder hurting and her eardrum smarting, she realized that it was his breath that smelled potently of gasoline. He must have been the one syphoning.

In that moment, she was absolutely convinced of the import of experiencing every gross, unpleasant, painful thing in the world...just as it was. These things, in fact, did not need to be made _different_. She had mistakenly thought that if she did not have to see and smell and hear these things she would feel safe. That was what she had wished for in the world from before, what was supposed to save her from Ed. But, then, that was a time when such possibilities existed. They didn't anymore. Without them, now, in this world...what waited was death without dying...or was it life without living? The grasping nothingness wouldn't distinguish.

"I'm sorry. I...was lost for a second. Could you let me go? I'm standing fine now and you are really hurting my shoulder."

Daryl had released her immediately, and moved so he was side-glancing at her as she wiped her eyes and breathed deeply to calm her heartbeat. She rolled her shoulder to ease the tightness of the muscles that had contracted in defense at being yanked, then bent to pick up the rifle she had discarded. She had straightened her clothing, and closed her eyes to take just a moment. She had been glad that Daryl was not a man that needed to talk. She didn't feel like she had to as a result.

Daryl had broken her out of gathering herself. "What the hell was that all about?" he hissed. "You left us wide open and I coulda been a walker and you woudn't a even noticed! I mean, that's the kinda crazy shit that makes people wonder if you're gonna..." He had let the sentence die. She knew what he had left unsaid. They all did after the fight between Andrea and Dale, and the scare with Beth. "Opt out." It was like it hung in the air.

Carol had filled her lungs deeply and then let out the breath. "Did you ever read Mark Twain in school?"

"What?" He had turned to look at her fully in confusion.

"Mark Twain. Huckleberry Finn? Tom Sawyer? The story about the jumping frog?"

"Oh. Yah, I read Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer both. Liked Huck Finn better. Thought it would be pretty cool to ride down the river on a raft. Why? What does that..."

"Back there. I was thinking about how he said something about death and taxes being inevitable. But that now taxes aren't. Inevitable, I mean. But then...death isn't quite either. Or it is, but then so is waking up again."

"It weren't Mark Twain."

"No?"

"Nope. Ben Franklin."

Carol had raised her eyebrows in surprise.

"Yep. And I think he mighta stole it from somebody else."

"How do you know that?"

Daryl had looked a little sheepish, then a flash of anger before answering. He turned and side-eyed her again. "Had to do a play in school. I was Ben."

Carol had been delighted, imagining little Daryl as Ben Franklin. She had remembered Sophia's grade school plays. She had remembered sewing costumes and helping her learn lines. She had remembered her favorite play, when Sophia had played an onion in "Hannah's Healthy Eating Habits." Sophia had hated the part. Sophia had thought onions were for boys. But the costume had been adorable, and every time Sophia had said her line, "I can be hot or sweet and I'm good with meat!" Carol couldn't help but snicker.

It was a healthy thing to laugh at. Carol had. She stopped when she remembered missing Sophia's last Christmas play, too injured to leave the house after one of Ed's worst attacks.

Daryl had looked at her sharply when she laughed, and his muscles had tensed. She had told him the story about Sophia, even the part about missing her last Christmas play. Daryl had seemed uncomfortable, but listened to it all.

"M' favorite line in our play was, 'Yikes! Lightning hurts!' It got a big laugh. I was 9."

Carol had chuckled, then quieted. They stood together for a few minutes not speaking. Carol still smelled the gasoline.

"Thank you, Daryl. And, I'm sorry."

He had looked at her, as if to ask a question that he never voiced.

"There are things I need to get better at. And I will."


End file.
